New patented lotion may take hassle out of ridding hair of lice.

Byline: THE HEALTH FILES By Tim Christie The Register-Guard

An infestation of lice, pardon the pun, is plain lousy.

Ask any kid who has had the blood-sucking parasites camping out on his or her scalp. Or parents burdened with picking nits, cleaning house and putting insect poison on their child's head. Or doctors frustrated as the sesame-seed-sized bugs become resistant to standard treatment.

Ask Jean McClain of Deerhorn. "My kids had it twice this summer," she said.

The first time, her 6-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter got the bugs while at a day camp. McClain applied Rid, an insecticidal anti-lice lotion, to her children's hair, cleaned the carpets in her home and the upholstery in her cars, washed all of the bedding and "pretty much isolated ourselves from friends" for 10 days.

Two months later, her son got lice again, and she repeated the whole burdensome routine. "It's a huge hassle," she said.

More and more parents who go through that hassle of standard treatment are finding it doesn't work. Researchers are reporting that lice are becoming resistant to the over-the-counter insecticides used to treat them.

"Every year there are some families who seem to have serious problems getting rid of it all and figuring out where it comes from," said Karen Brist, health services coordinator for the Springfield School District.

Hope may be on the way. A dermatologist in Menlo Park, Calif., near Stanford, says he has invented a better louse trap.

Dr. Dale Pearlman has spent the past eight years developing and testing a lotion he calls Nuvo that doesn't poison lice - it suffocates them.

"There's no poison in it at all, which parents and doctors love," he said. "All we do is suffocate them so they can't breathe."

The lotion is applied to the hair, then dried with a hair dryer, creating an impermeable "shrink wrap" barrier around the lice and their eggs. Once dry, the lotion is invisible, and it stays on for anywhere for eight to 24 hours, then is rinsed out with shampoo.

Applied once a week for three weeks, the lotion proved to be 96 percent effective among 133 of Pearlman's patients. Six months later, 94 percent of the patients had not had a reoccurrence. Results of his study were reported today in the journal Pediatrics.

Pearlman also found the rigorous housecleaning associated with lice infestation - daily vacuuming, quarantining of stuffed animals, carpet cleaning - is largely unnecessary.

"It's like this terrible black cloud disaster that descends on the house," he said. "This is the first product to prove you don't need to do that."

He had the parents of his patients to do minimal cleaning: laundering clothing as usual, putting sheets in a hot dryer and sterilizing brushes and combs. He also found the painstaking process of picking nits is unnecessary.

Pearlman is excited about his patented innovation, which is not yet on the market. He's hoping the Pediatrics study will spark interest among pharmaceutical companies who would have the resources and know-how to shepherd it through the regulatory process and market the product. While lice are no longer viewed as a public health threat, an infestation can carry with it a huge stigma, Pearlman said.

"Parents come into my office, and they're more mad about having this than any other diagnosis I know," he said.

While having head lice is common, no reliable estimates are available on how many people get lice each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Elementary-age children are most likely to get lice, which spread by direct contact: When kids share hats or combs, or rub their heads together, often at school, camp or slumber parties.

For teachers and other school officials, lice are an unpleasant reality of every school year. Teachers tell students not to share hats or combs, not to pile their coats up on the floor. Kids with active lice are sent home for the day.

In some states such as Nebraska, public health officials urge parents to routinely check their children's scalps for lice. Locally, lice have a lower profile.

In the Eugene School District, teachers and school officials try to keep kids and parents from becoming traumatized when lice is detected, health services manager Maxine Proskurowski said.

"We just keep it low key and we don't try to single a kid out," she said. "We keep it very quiet."

Tim Christie can be reached at 338-2572 or tchristie@ guardnet.com.